More Like this

1. Differential Fairness: An Intersectional Framework for Fair AI

   https://doi.org/10.3390/e25040660  

   Islam, Rashidul; Keya, Kamrun Naher; Pan, Shimei; Sarwate, Anand D.; Foulds, James R. (April 2023, Entropy)

   We propose definitions of fairness in machine learning and artificial intelligence systems that are informed by the framework of intersectionality, a critical lens from the legal, social science, and humanities literature which analyzes how interlocking systems of power and oppression affect individuals along overlapping dimensions including gender, race, sexual orientation, class, and disability. We show that our criteria behave sensibly for any subset of the set of protected attributes, and we prove economic, privacy, and generalization guarantees. Our theoretical results show that our criteria meaningfully operationalize AI fairness in terms of real-world harms, making the measurements interpretable in a manner analogous to differential privacy. We provide a simple learning algorithm using deterministic gradient methods, which respects our intersectional fairness criteria. The measurement of fairness becomes statistically challenging in the minibatch setting due to data sparsity, which increases rapidly in the number of protected attributes and in the values per protected attribute. To address this, we further develop a practical learning algorithm using stochastic gradient methods which incorporates stochastic estimation of the intersectional fairness criteria on minibatches to scale up to big data. Case studies on census data, the COMPAS criminal recidivism dataset, the HHP hospitalization data, and a loan application dataset from HMDA demonstrate the utility of our methods. 

   more » « less
2. An Intersectional Definition of Fairness

   Foulds, James R.; Islam, Rashidul; Keya, Kamrun Naher; Pan, Shimei (April 2020, IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering)

   We propose differential fairness, a multi-attribute definition of fairness in machine learning which is informed by intersectionality, a critical lens arising from the humanities literature, leveraging connections between differential privacy and legal notions of fairness. We show that our criterion behaves sensibly for any subset of the set of protected attributes, and we prove economic, privacy, and generalization guarantees. We provide a learning algorithm which respects our differential fairness criterion. Experiments on the COMPAS criminal recidivism dataset and census data demonstrate the utility of our methods. 

   more » « less
3. Differential Fairness

   Foulds, James R.; Islam, Rashidul; Keya, Kamrun Naher; Pan, Shimei (December 2019, NeurIPS 2019 Workshop on Machine Learning with Guarantees)

   We propose differential fairness, a multi-attribute definition of fairness in machine learning which is informed by the framework of intersectionality, a critical lens arising from the humanities literature, leveraging connections between differential privacy and legal notions of fairness. We show that our criterion behaves sensibly for any subset of the set of protected attributes, and we prove economic, privacy, and generalization guarantees. We provide a learning algorithm which respects our differential fairness criterion. Experiments on the COMPAS criminal recidivism dataset and census data demonstrate the utility of our methods. 

   more » « less
4. MANI-RANK: Multi-attribute and Intersectional Fairness for Consensus Ranking

   Cachel, K.; Rundensteiner, E.; Harrison, L. (May 2022, IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE))

   Combining the preferences of many rankers into one single consensus ranking is critical for consequential applications from hiring and admissions to lending. While group fairness has been extensively studied for classification, group fairness in rankings and in particular rank aggregation remains in its infancy. Recent work introduced the concept of fair rank aggregation for combining rankings but restricted to the case when candidates have a single binary protected attribute, i.e., they fall into two groups only. Yet it remains an open problem how to create a consensus ranking that represents the preferences of all rankers while ensuring fair treatment for candidates with multiple protected attributes such as gender, race, and nationality. In this work, we are the first to define and solve this open Multi-attribute Fair Consensus Ranking (MFCR) problem. As a foundation, we design novel group fairness criteria for rankings, called MANI-Rank, ensuring fair treatment of groups defined by individual protected attributes and their intersection. Leveraging the MANI-Rank criteria, we develop a series of algorithms that for the first time tackle the MFCR problem. Our experimental study with a rich variety of consensus scenarios demonstrates our MFCR methodology is the only approach to achieve both intersectional and protected attribute fairness while also representing the preferences expressed through many base rankings. Our real-world case study on merit scholarships illustrates the effectiveness of our MFCR methods to mitigate bias across multiple protected attributes and their intersections. 

   more » « less
5. Causal Intersectionality and Fair Ranking

   Yang, Ke; Loftus, Joshua R.; Stoyanovich, Julia (January 2021, 2nd Symposium on Foundations of Responsible Computing (FORC))

   null (Ed.)

   In this paper we propose a causal modeling approach to intersectional fairness, and a flexible, task-specific method for computing intersectionally fair rankings. Rankings are used in many contexts, ranging from Web search to college admissions, but causal inference for fair rankings has received limited attention. Additionally, the growing literature on causal fairness has directed little attention to intersectionality. By bringing these issues together in a formal causal framework we make the application of intersectionality in algorithmic fairness explicit, connected to important real world effects and domain knowledge, and transparent about technical limitations. We experimentally evaluate our approach on real and synthetic datasets, exploring its behavior under different structural assumptions. 

   more » « less